Extracellular probes are often too large for use in applications where the target cells in a cellular membrane, for example, have relatively small sizes. For example, extra-cellular probes are generally too big for measuring single neuron behavior. Even when miniaturized, many prior art probes suffer from other handicaps such as being vibration sensitive and causing cell death due to materials incompatibility. It is therefore desirable to provide a probe that is not only small in size but is also suitable for performing various types of measurements upon a variety of target objects having different sizes and densities.